ohmidog!

Uprooting the art collection of Albert Barnes is one thing. Disrespecting his dog — who wasn’t one to suffer fools, either — is quite another.

We don’t know if Fidèle bit, but the millionaire’s dog, back when they were both alive, did write some pretty biting letters.

The art uprooting happened last year when, against his will (the written kind), the Barnes Foundation toted the eccentric collector’s masterpieces from suburban Merion to downtown Philadelphia — 181 Renoirs, 69 Cézannes, 59 Matisses and 46 Picassos included.

The dissing of Fidèle — a mid-sized black and white dog — just occured.

An exhibit at the new museum containing Fidèle’s dog bed, and several letters that the dog “wrote,” has been closed to make room for a showing of sculpture by Ellsworth Kelly, Bloomberg reports.

As the Bloomberg reporter sees it, the change — while maybe not anyone’s intention — further removes Barnes from the impressive array of art he collected:

“Less than a year after Albert Barnes’s art, uprooted from its original home in Merion, Pennsylvania, occupied new quarters, the collector himself has been removed from the Philadelphia museum that now houses his treasures.”

Last May, after years of lawsuits and heated opposition, and in a saga far too intricate to fully cover here, the Barnes Foundation, which oversees the collection, moved the art to a modern building in downtown Philadelphia, where it was thought it would be more accessible to the public.

That ran counter to what Barnes specified in the will he had written before his death in 1951, in which he expressly forbade moving the pictures from Merion.

The foundation – to show some respect to the man they were disobeying — opened the new downtown museum with a special show in tribute to him, entitled, “Ensemble: Albert C. Barnes and the Experiment in Education.”

It depicted the history of the collection, and the man behind it — a doctor, chemist and the developer of Argyrol, an antiseptic useful for the treatment of gonorrhea.

It also showcased his dog — both the bed specially constructed and inscribed for Fidèle, and some of the many letters Barnes wrote under his dog’s name, in French, and all stamped with a pawprint.

Fidèle once wrote Winston Churchill to congratulate him on the liberation of France (where she was from). More commonly, she wrote  to express her owner’s anger over something, or to art critics who had requested to view his master’s collection. Generally, she would reject the requests, sometimes in a rude and sassy manner that reflected Barnes’s distaste with the art establishment.

“While the Barnes tribute was never described as permanent, its removal struck some as a further slight to the man and his legacy,” Bloomberg reported.

The new exhibit, “Ellsworth Kelly: Sculpture on the Wall,” opens May 4. A spokesperson for the foundation said that, despite the old exhibit closing, continued efforts are underway to ensure Barnes keeps a high profile.

Fidèle’s profile appears to be less of a concern.

Maybe she should write a letter.

Credit a family dog in Virginia with finding the evidence that would lead to the arrest of a 20-year-old man on charges of robbery after he lured a car buyer to meet him through an ad on Craigslist.

Derek Shifflett, 20, of Verona, became a suspect in the case after a friend’s dog found the money — $12,000 — hidden under a bed.

Sgt. David Lotts, of the Augusta County Sheriff’s Office, said Shifflett posted a Honda Civic for sale on Craigslist, and made arrangements to meet an interested buyer.

The victim, from a car dealership in Hendersonville, N.C., traveled to Verona Monday afternoon and met with Shifflett, who told him the vehicle was being cleaned and filled with gas.

At one point, authorities say, Shifflett pushed the prospective buyer, a 64-year-old man, snatched an envelope containing $12,000 from his coat pocket, and ran off.

A few hours later, a Verona woman called the sheriff’s office after her dog pulled an envelope full of cash from beneath a bed in her home and began playing with it.

“The dog drug it out,” Lotts told Newsleader.com. “I guess he thought it was a new toy.”

Lotts said the woman’s son is friends with Shifflett. Shifflett turned himself in at the sheriff’s office late Monday night.

Lotts said the ad was fictitious and that Shifflett ” just took a random picture with a cell phone.”

“I figured that money was long gone,” he said.

When nine-week-old Harper Brousseau stopped breathing during the night, a mutt named Duke woke up her parents.

Jenna Brousseau says Duke jumped up on her bed Sunday night, and woke up her and her husband with his shaking.

That was out of character for Duke, so the couple went to check on their daughter at their home in Connecticut to make sure everything was alright.

In the nursery, they found their daughter wasn’t breathing and called 911.

Paramedics were able to revive the baby, who’s now doing fine.

Until the last couple of weeks, Dan Rubin was among that minority of Americans who don’t let their pets into bed with them.

That’s right, I said minority, at least according to the American Pet Products Association (APPA), which earlier this year released the results of a survey showing nearly half of dog owners and 62 percent of cat owners share their beds with their pets.

That’s a pretty stunning figure — one that shows not just our increasing  closeness to our pets, but our willingness to proudly admit it, even to  survey-taking strangers inquiring about our bedroom habits.

But back to Dan (which is how his dog Harley is sometimes sleeping nowadays).

Dan is a friend of mine, a former colleague and Philadelphia Inquirer columnist who never got into the practice of laying down with dogs, at least not in bed. He’s a dog lover, but he’s also a sleep lover, and the latter is more easily accomplished without a 113-pound dog squirming about, he notes.

A couple of weeks ago, Harley, his  five-year-old bouvier des Flandres, had leg surgery, Dan explained in his Monday column. And his vet declared stairs off limits for eight weeks.

That meant lonely nights for Harley, who — though not allowed in bed — was accustomed to at least sleeping on the same floor as his family.

Dan’s wife, Mimi, wasn’t about to let that happen. She announced she would sleep downstairs with Harley. Dan, like a dog, followed.

They moved all the furniture out of the TV room and replaced it with a futon mattress, then made a sleeping area for Harley, adjacent to it, topped with his favorite blanket.

But the first night, Dan found Harley on his pillow. A few nights later, Harley settled down on Mimi’s pillow, and they decided there was room for all three, kind of, even with the huge plastic cone Harley has to wear around his neck:

” … He has to wear one of those plastic lamp shades – at the vet’s they called it an Elizabethan collar. It’s about the size of a satellite dish, and he knocks about in the dark with the grace of a rutting Triceratops.”

Harley had surgery for a ruptured cranial cruciate ligament. It involved  planing the tibia and making a mechanical adjustment so his bones hinge without requiring the support of the damaged ligament, Dan explained.

With Dan’s man cave temporarily converted into a man/wife/dog cave, Dan says he has had to make sacrifices:

“…We can’t watch baseball in bed because Harley likes to rush the screen every time he sees a pitcher go into his windup. Best I can tell, he thinks they’ve got his ball.”

We wish Harley a full and speedy recovery. And we sincerely hope Dan doesn’t give him fleas.

Photo: Courtesy of Dan Rubin

Remember the old Chevrolet commercial — baseball, hot dogs, apple pie and Chevrolet?

Well, decades later, the car company has, for the sake of selling motor vehicles, gotten around to acknowledging another piece of Americana — the dog; specifically, the dog in the pickup truck; more specifically, the dog in a Chevrolet pickup.

And that, they will find out as the new ad airs, if they haven’t yet, is some tricky ground.

It’s one of those topics that raises the hackles of animal welfare activists, some of whom who say under no conditions should a dog be riding in the bed of a pickup , some of whom say it’s acceptable if the dog is crated or restrained, all of whom say riding in the cab would be preferable.

And they are right. For safety’s sake, it probably would be.

Last week, in “Travels with Ace,” the continuing saga of the trip Ace and I are taking across America, we showed you Jake, a golden retriever in Oregon still sporting injuries he received when he tumbled out the back of a moving pickup. We did so without casting judgments or getting preachy, because our road trip is not about how dogs should live in America, only about how they do live in America.

In much of rural America, dogs are still dogs. They roam their property, and perhaps that of other’s, at their will. They chase and sometimes kill wildlife. Some even live, gasp, outside. And they ride in the back of pickups, which virtually all animal welfare organizations will tell you is a bad idea.

The Chevy ad, to its credit, doesn’t show any dogs in the beds of moving pickups, but, even so, I’m predicting it will lead to some lively debate if it airs widely.

On YouTube, it has already started — through Internet comments, gracious and civil as  always.

“Cute video, but I wish Chevy wouldn’t advocate the dogs in the back unless in a crate. Since I have seen a dog fly out of the back of a truck on a busy highway, I am traumatized for life. It should be illegal and is some places for your dog to ride loose in the bed of your truck unless you are on your own dirt road on your property with no other cars around and are willing to pay the vet bill if your dog falls out…”

“If I thought for a second my dog would ever jump out, he wouldn’t ride back there. And he doesn’t on the interstate. But on going into town, on rural country roads, and on my ranch, he will always ride in the back and he wouldn’ t have it any other way. MIND YOUR OWN F***ING BUSINESS FAG…”

“Greatest commercial! Too bad liberal know it all’s have created laws against dogs riding in truck beds! Apparently (like most libs) they know what’s best for us, and will make laws accordingly. My dog will ride in the back forever though, they can suck his hairy nuts…”

Besides reflecting how crass anonymous internet banter can get — how Internet commenting has replaced the punching bag as man’s default mode of venting hostilities — the discourse shows the cultural divide that exists in this country, one that’s not so much conservative versus liberal as it is rural America versus the rest.

It’s a generalization, but many denizens of rural America don’t want the rest of America making rules that govern their access to firearms, or how they raise their dogs — from whether they spay and neuter to letting them ride in the back of pickups.

There’s something to be said for letting a dog being a dog — as opposed to spending life on a leash or in a handbag – but is putting Rover in the back of a pickup letting a dog be a dog? In my view, it’s courting disaster.

Yet, while many experts also advise that dogs in cars be crated or restrained, Ace is traveling acoss the country unrestrained in the back of my Jeep.

Maybe that’s why I don’t come down harder on dogs in pickups; maybe it’s a degree of respect for rural ways; or maybe it’s because the surest way to make people become more entrenched in a bad habit is to tell them they can’t do it anymore.

On my first night in Missoula, I fell asleep with one dog and woke up with a different one.

On the next night, I fell asleep with two dogs and woke up with one.

On the third night, I fell asleep with two dogs and woke up with none. 

For the first time in our five months of traveling, in the latest of the long line of friends and family off whom we have freeloaded, Ace opted to sleep with someone other than me.

My feelings are hurt, but not too badly.

Back in Missoula, Ace has found a lively playmate, and I’ve been in full freeloading mode, enjoying all the comforts of somebody else’s home.

Gwen Florio, a reporter for the Missoulian, who I used to work with at the Philadelphia Inquirer, was kind enough to invite Ace and I to stay with her, her husband Scott, and their dog Nell – a four-month-old Brittany spaniel.

I’ve eaten most of their leftovers, drank most of their milk, eaten most of their eggs, watched their TV and had my own room in the basement, featuring one of the top two beds I’ve slept on (the other being in Santa Fe) during our journey.

Two more weeks on it, and I think my back would stop hurting.

But, as  much as I’ve enjoyed nesting at Gwen’s, it’s time to press on to Seattle.

On the first night, I retired early and Ace came to bed with me. When Nell jumped in – well to be honest, she jumped up, putting her front paws on the bed, and I pulled her up the rest of the way – Ace jumped off. I fell asleep snuggling with Nell, but when I woke up she was gone, and Ace was laying at my side.

On the second night, Gwen was working late on election night, and after watching a little bit of the “shellacking” on TV, I retired early. This time, Ace didn’t mind Nell joining us (if only Republicans and Democrats could learn to co-exist so quickly), and I fell asleep with the two of them – once Nell completed her process of nibbling my hands, squirming, walking over me, turning in circles, pawing at the bedspread, nibbling my hands some more, turning a few more circles and finally flopping down with a sigh. By morning, though (like many a Democrat), she was gone.

On the third night, I retired even earlier, and they both followed me to bed, and  both got in. But when I woke up they had both abandoned me. While I slept, Gwen had returned home and the dogs joined her for the night. Fortunately, her husband was out of town so there was room in her bed for them both.

Ace and Nell have gotten along great, and it has been interesting to watch their play progress — from timid and restrained to no-holds-barred wrestling. She’s Muhammad Ali to Ace’s Joe Frazier. In her back yard, a stone’s throw from the base of Mt. Jumbo, she runs circles around him, eggs him on, gives him a jab or a nip, then darts away. He keeps plodding forward, swinging with his paws, then watching as she bounces across the yard like a pinball.

Ace — despite my initial fears — hasn’t tried to use Nell’s dog door. It’s the perfect size for her, and she speeds in and out of the house at her will. It’s the perfect size for Ace to get stuck in. I had visions of having to take the door off its hinges and taking them both to a vet, or a hardware store, to have dog and door surgically separated.

Luckily, Ace hasn’t tried to use it, or even poke his nose through, probably because it — also like politicians – flaps and makes noise .

Nell, at four months, still engages in the kind of mischief pups perpetrate. At home during the day, while I wasn’t paying attention, she snagged a full roll of toilet paper, took it through her dog door and proceeded to decorate the lawn with confetti. She managed to get into my toothpaste, but apparently decided not to make a meal of it.

Ace, though he seemed unsure how to react to her puppiness at first, now wrestles with her in the way he does with his favorite dogs, nipping at her legs, trying to put her entire head in his mouth, going after her little nub of a tail — all with his trademark gentleness.

When he tires of it all he flops down in the yard, as he did yesterday morning. The grass was white with frost, and Ace relaxed with one of Nell’s toys that he’s grown especially fond of, probably because it has, or once had, peanut butter in it.

For 15 minutes, as Nell alternately looked on, ran circles around him, darted inside and out again, Ace laid there with the purple toy, and when he got up, there was a big green circle where the frost had melted away under his body heat.

To me, it seemed symbolic (then again, I hadn’t had my coffee yet) of what dogs do for us.

They melt away our frosty exteriors, they bring out the unjaded us that can be buried pretty deeply beneath the shells we hide behind, the image we project, all our bullshit and bluster.

They knock down the walls we put up.

Maybe our politicians could learn a thing or two from them, to the point of even becoming bedfellows — not in the dirty sense of the word, but in terms of working together to achieve a goal.

How cool would that be, if they could all settle down, bark less, share the toys, and — as dogs do — make the world a better place?

Hard times for Mike Harding led to dogs around the world resting comfortably.

Harding got laid off from his Wall Street firm in 1987, and it was that setback that led him to start his own company — Kuranda Dog Beds in Glen Burnie, The Capital in Annapolis reported yesterday.

Quickly becoming an industry standard, and a fixture at kennels and shelters, the chew resistant, elevated cots are sold out of small office near BWI Thurgood Marshall Airport — about 30,000 of them a year.

Harding says he never expected the dog bed to make a profit. Instead, he had higher hopes for another product — a roller that absorbs water from tennis courts and ball fields, called the Super Sopper. It never took off.

But Kurunda beds have since 1993 when Harding’s friend and investor, Paul Connolly, took the bed to a local kennel to gauge interest. The interest was there but the bed — the prototype was round — took up to much space.

That sent Harding back to the drawing board, where he came up with a new rectangular model.

“We immediately started making sales to boarding kennels, breeders, and hunters,” Harding said.

Since then, the bed has continued to evolve, and draw praise from kennels and shelters who need durable beds that stand up to high pressure washing.

All of the beds come out of the Glen Burnie building, where employees assemble the kits that are shipped to customers from Texas to Hong Kong.

In 2005, Connolly came up with the company’s “Donate a Bed” program, which allows anyone to use Kurunda’s website to buy a bed at wholesale and then donate it to a shelter. Forty of the donated beds recently went to Iraq for the dogs used by the military to sniff out explosives.

 
Perhaps you’ve heard people say this: Two dogs are just as easy as one. Or, three dogs are just as easy as two.

It’s not so.

Bearing in mind that it depends in large extent on the individual dogs, and having a routine carved out for them, the amount of time and energy spent on caring for multiple dogs doesn’t just double with two dogs, or triple with three dogs. When it comes to multiple dogs, basic math goes out the window.

Among my observations so far — based on my hosting three guest canines for Christmas, two of which have arrived so far to join me and my own dog Ace:

– Three dogs, who you would think would drink three times the amount of water as one, actually drink eight times the amount.

– Three dogs who normally wouldn’t follow you from room to room, all follow you from room to room when they are together.

– Three dogs, as all three have to do whatever one does — be it drinking water, peeing, barking or jumping on the human –  actually engage in 18 times the amount of activity that they would on their own.

My newest arrival is a young Boston terrier named Darcy, who possesses an energy level equivalent to a whole  litter of Energizer bunnies. She’s constantly on the go. She likes to get up on the couch or a chair, so she’s at eye level with Ace, and then slap her paws into his face. Ace responds by taking Darcy’s paw, leg, or entire head into his mouth, at which point Darcy freezes until Ace lets go. Then they do it all over again. Cheyenne, the visiting blind dog, stayed out of those frays.

Darcy’s humans brought plenty of toys, which everyone is sharing nicely. Cheyenne went nuts over Darcy’s tug toy, whipping it around and flinging it, trying to find where it went, then doing it all over again.

Darcy meanwhile took a strong liking to Cheyenne’s bed — pulling it out of the crate,  attempting to impregnate it (though she’s a female), nursing on its bulges, and finally trying to pull the stuffing out of it, at which point I had to separate her from her lover/mother/prey.

Somebody pooped in the house (I’m not pointing any fingers), a feat which, fortunately, the others — so far — haven’t felt the need to duplicate.

All three took turns resting on the couch, engaging in play and gnawing on one well-chewed marrow bone.

As evening fell I learned that walking three dogs is 8.7 times harder than walking one, 23.5 times harder when you thrown in the ice, and it left me 10.6 times more tired than I should have been.

Back from the park, after dinner and a few more spurts of play, the gang finally started settling down, and we all sacked out on the couch — except for Ace, who knew he wouldn’t fit. He settled for putting his head only on the couch for a few minutes, then sprawled out at the foot of it.

You know that feeling you get when the day is done, and your work is finished, and you look over at your peacefully sleeping, or even just resting dog — that soul-comforting, all-is-right-with-the-world flush of warm contentment, better even than a crackling fire, hot chocolate, or a steaming bowl of macaroni and cheese?

Turns out multiple dogs make that feeling rise exponentially, too.

On my three dog night, with the blind one curled up between my legs, her head resting on my feet; the big one on floor by the couch, reaching for me now and then with his paw; and the little Boston terrier resting, finally, on my belly, I realized I was feeling 9.9 times more peaceful and harmonious than usual.

(To read all of the “Company for Christmas” series, click here.)

A year-old pit bull is recovering after being dragged for nearly two miles behind a pick-up truck in Florida.

Holly, as the dog was named by the veterinarian treating her, had two toes surgically removed yesterday but “is doing really well,” Dr. Leonard Fox in Port St. Lucie said. “I really do believe that six weeks from now she’ll be running around like nothing happened,” he told TCPalm.com.

When she was brought in, the dog had severe road rash, particularly on her feet, which Fox said “look like ground beef.” She’d been dragged so long the big toes on her rear paws were worn down to the bone, necessitating the amputation.

Fox said the road rash will have to be treated like burns, with fresh bandages every few days. More surgery may be required Thursday or Friday to remove dead skin, and Holly may get a cast on her left hind foot as well.

The driver of the truck, Napoleon Zarah Davis, 31, of Port St. Lucie, was released from the St. Lucie County Jail Monday after paying $2,500 bond on a felony charge of animal cruelty.

The story is similar to one  recently reported in Tennessee.

Davis told police he was taking the dog to the Humane Society of St. Lucie County Monday when the dog jumped out of the truck bed. The dog was dragged 1.9 miles, before a man caught up to Davis and got him to stop the truck, according to police.

Davis  told police he didn’t know the dog, whose 15-foot leash was tied to a post in the truck bed, had jumped out.

(Photo: Port St. Lucie Police Department)

Snoopy beat out Lassie, but just barely, in a recent poll conducted on behalf of the new AOL pet website, PawNation.com.

Both Lassie and Snoopy captured 39 percent of the votes for “favorite celebrity animal,” but Snoopy edged the beloved, but fading from memory collie by 14 votes. Garfield and Scooby Doo trailed with 12 and 11 percent, respectively.

The survey covered other important issues as well.

Asked “which celebrity pet’s passing did you mourn the most?” Oprah’s deceased dog Sophie came in at the top, followed by Mickey Rourke’s chihuahua, Loki.

In other results from the poll, the honors for ”craziest pet owner” went to Leona Helmsley, with Paris Hilton a distant second. And the celebrity picked as the one people would most trust to watch their pet was Jennifer Aniston, who captured a whopping 70 percent of the vote, beating out Mickey Rourke, Pam Anderson and Nicole Richie.

Almost half of the respondents said their pets sleep in their beds every night, and more than fourth said they did some sometimes.

(Graphic: from redkid’s ”Snoopy Says Generator”)